"Please deliver to upstairs porch."

When the pandemic began, I started having my groceries delivered, and my groceries are still delivered. It costs extra but not much, and shopping sucks, especially now that I don't have a car. Jeez, a bus ride to the store, shopping, and then a bus ride home? That would be an hour, minimum. Screw that.

The delivery driver doesn't ring the bell or need to see me; they simply leave the groceries on the porch. My standing instructions are, "Please deliver to upstairs porch."

Which seems obvious — the front porch is four steps up from the walkway, but they'd sometimes delivered my groceries to a smaller porch at the side, where the door leads to the basement. So I'd added the note.

And one more thing: It's summertime, and our house has no air conditioning, so we leave the front and side doors open all day, allowing a breeze to blow through the place. That side door is an emergency exit just outside my bedroom, where a rickety wooden flight of stairs leads down to the garage and the back of the house...

♦ ♦ ♦

I'd ordered groceries, delivery had been promised between 3PM and 5PM, and then, of course, I'd gotten distracted and forgotten that groceries were on the way. At about 4:45 I remembered, and popped out of my recliner to see whether the popsicles had become a puddle.

When I stepped out of my bedroom, a pretty woman was standing atop those rickety stairs, not five feet from me, with groceries in her hands. She said hello through the wide-open door, and started putting my grocs down, but why was she where she was — up a flight of stairs that you can't even see from the street?

"Uh, howdy," I said, "How did you find this door? Usually they leave groceries on the front porch."

"Oh, I'm sorry, but the note says 'deliver to upstairs porch', so I looked around and found these steps." 

OK, she had climbed up some stairs, and where she was standing is technically a porch, so — "upstairs porch."

I chuckled, and the lady was smiley and chatty and cute, and we talked for about a minute, mostly about the dog that was barking at her from a basement window.

Then I said thanks and good night, and started taking my groceries to the fridge, and she said good night and went down those rickety stairs and disappeared into the afternoon.

That's when it occurred to me that I was wearing only underpants and a t-shirt. Hey, I'd been inside my house, relaxing. She hadn't snickered, but I'm a very fat man, so perhaps I should be self-conscious about standing in front of a stranger in my underwear?

Also, my t-shirt had pit stains and mustard stains, and in the next moment I remembered that all my underwear is old and ratty, too — tighty whiteys gone gray.

And then I remembered that I'd masturbated just before opening my bedroom door. So I stepped into the bathroom to check the mirror, and yeah, there were un-subtle wet splotches on the front of my gray undies.

So... I'd said howdy and had a conversation with a woman — 30-35 years old, not Mary Elizabeth Winstead but not unattractive — while wearing only a t-shirt and cum-moistened underwear.

And I can't remember whether she'd already left before I'd lifted the two sacks of groceries and turned around, which would've shown multiple skid marks on the back of my briefs.

♦ ♦ ♦

After putting my groceries away, I went to the store's website and changed my delivery directions to, "the front porch," not "the upstairs porch."

8/10/2023  

 itsdougholland.com
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